A 77-year-old physically challenged woman, Delsie Gayle was flying back home to London from Barcelona aboard a Ryanair flight when a man on her row started ranting at her, saying she should move seats.

Gayle was unable to move out of her aisle seat quickly enough to let the man sit down in his window seat, and then he began using abusive and racist remarks on her.

He was then told she was disabled to which he responded: “I don’t care whether she’s f****** disabled or not – if I tell her to get out she gets out.”

Later on in the argument, the white man said: “Don’t talk to me in a f****** foreign language you stupid ugly cow.”

When another passenger told the man he was being abusive, he responded: “I will carry on as far as I can with this ugly black bastard.”

“I was shocked, nobody ever said those words to me. I travel a lot, I go to Canada…and no-one has every said those words to me,” Gayle told ITV.

“I feel really depressed about it. I go to my bed and say, ‘What have I done?’ I haven’t done anything (for him) to attack me because of the colour of my skin.

“I feel very low, because he pay his fare to go on holiday, I pay mine, so why does he abuse me for that due to the colour of my skin? He does it with me and he gets away, he’ll do it to somebody else,” she added.

Speaking further, Gayle said: “I don’t eat, I can’t sleep. I’m just lying down there, I don’t eat. I’m just lying down there and think I’ve never gone through this with all my travelling.”

According to Independent, a spokesperson for Essex Police said: “Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported. We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.”